4 ms·
I've been on the hiring end of the spectrum for a while (and our teams haven't done any lay offs). One thing I've definitely noticed as a repeating pattern is
by cj 2y ago
I've been on the hiring end of the spectrum for a while (and our teams haven't done any lay offs).
One thing I've definitely noticed as a repeating pattern is a lot of candidates who are laid off were making astronomical salaries compared to their years of experience. E.g. I recently interviewed a marketing manager candidate with 4 years of experience who was asking for a salary higher than an engineer with 10 years of experience. In today's current market, I'd expect the engineer to be earning 30-50% more due to higher market salaries in engineering and more yrs experience.
A lot of companies prior to doing lay offs had a lot of junior/mid-level employees earning what (today) would only be offered to a senior.
Companies can't go to their employees and say "Oops, we hired you at a salary that, today, is too high for the role you're in" -- I guess they could try, but that conversation wouldn't go over well with most people.
I also don't really blame companies for being in this situation. They had to offer inflated salaries because the only alternative was to hire no one during the covid boom.
So basically, by firing and re-hiring, you can reset an entire department's salary bands. Which sometimes can be healthy especially if people within the company share salary info with each other, and a newly hired person with 10 yrs experience finding out they earn 30% less than someone with 3 years experience, just because of the timing of when they were hired.
It's kind of a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. (Including the company who in many cases would prefer not to churn the staff just to reset salaries back down to market levels)
- Aperocky 2y ago> newly hired person with 10 yrs experience finding out they earn 30% less than someone with 3 years experience, just because of the timing of when they were hired. That's the problem with how pay scales, job titles and performance evaluation are setup. If there are no standard way to set this for everyone then this will bound to just happen again and be a recurring pain.
- cj 2y agoUnfortunately the only obvious solution I can think of is to have salaries that can go up and down like the stock market, so that employees are always paid market rates. But of course that won’t fly at any company. Every employee expects annual pay increases no matter what.
- tmcdos 2y agoAnd these increases are based on what? His improved speed of work, or improved quality of work, or better company culture, or just the time that has been passed?
- Pet_Ant 2y ago> I also don't really blame companies for being in this situation. They had to offer inflated salaries because the only alternative was to hire no one during the covid boom. Then don't hire? The point of full-time is to avoid uncertainty and instability. If you want that flexibility as an employer, then pay the premium of contract developers. This is why you need to have no "right-to-work" legislation for prevent non-cause firing. And no, "I can get cheaper" is not a valid cause.
- cj 2y agoIf you're optimizing for job security of a country's workforce, absolutely. If you're optimizing for economic growth, telling companies to freeze hiring when wages increase is going to result in slower growth.
- Pet_Ant 2y agoStability creates economic growth. I work for a Fortune 500 company. I expect to keep working at it for the next 10 years. That means I treat my income as a revenue stream, and that if I lose my job I can find another relatively soon with a relatively similar salary. I buy cars and houses and trips and in general budget as if there is more income coming. This grows the economy. If you make employment precarious, then I'm gonna treat each pay cheque as a windfall that will be hoarded into a low-risk savings because I have no security and no idea how many more may come. This shrinks the economy. So, if you want to grow the economy it's best to reduce future uncertainty and over reacting to current events and smooth out bumps. ...and if you don't want to honor the social contract of a full-time job, then just hire contract workers. Otherwise it's just as sleazy as saying you want a relationship and then ghosting after fucking. It's gross.